let me start with WOW. this is a film about 1965 indonesian death squad leaders who are still celebrities in the county. professing themselves as gangsters, which they interpret as "free men", and loosely imitating the bad guys they watched on american films, they openly and blatantly discuss the thousands of "commies" that died at their hand. the primary focus of the film is anwar congo, the founding father of a paramilitary organization called the pancasila. anwar is thrilled to relate his successes. the gangsters decide to tell their story through re-enactments; they take great pleasure in discussing every detail...from how they dressed, to where the performed the executions, the technique, the victim's facial and verbal expressions. it is wildly bizarre and somewhat sickening to hear them discuss the deaths in a most cavalier manner. the reenactments are almost surreal. anwar discusses his preferred method of execution, having devised it to eliminate the great amounts of blood that other methods created--he used wire to strangle the victim. the men are very open about their methods; the way they even changed facts to be able to kill a "commie". most of the film shows no remorse in any of these men; rather they portray glee at the work. it is only toward the end, after a particularly graphic and violent reenactment involving women and children that we see anwar show some degree of empathy. the paramilitary group is still in charge in indonesia and we see evidence of coercion and corruption still in place today. i never knew about the genocide in indonesia; a similar genocide in cambodia is much better known through the film "the killing fields". it remains unimaginable to me that these men continue to live a good, happy, prosperous life; they continue to intimidate; and they seem to do it all with total impunity. truly....you will be blown away when you see these men so giddy in describing their actions of nearly 50 years ago.
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